Interesting post by Anil Dash on the effect of being placed on Twitters list of suggested users and the subsequent massive increase in followers:

To quote: ‘After just a few days of being on the list, though, I made an interesting discovery that offers a dramatic distinction from buying featured position in an online store: Being on Twitter’s suggested user list makes no appreciable difference in the amount of retweets, replies, or clicks that I get.’

Following on from the disappointment of IKEA’s app (read below in this blog) I’d like to give respect to the guys at Zolmo who created Jamie Olivers iPhone app, and use it as an example of what can/should be done. Ok, you have to pay for it but what you get is a well produced interactive product with some good (read useful) features like interactive shopping lists for specific recipes, both text and visual descriptions of what/how to to cook and some helpful video tutorials. Now I could browse online for similar items but having all the info in my pocket is a real time saver. Proof is in the pudding (or risotto) as they say and I can vouch for how it helped a not very good cook (me) to make a rather tasty dinner last night!

Moving forward it’d be good to be able to download additional recipes (at a nominal fee) and have the opportunity to get social by share ratings on the menus. If you fancy a play go to iTunes else download it here: http://www.jamieoliver.com/20-minute-meals/

So, recipe for us digital folk is – produce something useful (therefore people will want it) and produce it well (so people enjoy using it). Obvious you’d think but I’m still surprised how many agencies miss these basic ingredients.

Theres been a lot of buzz around IKEA’s recent Facebook campaign with plenty of people giving it a thumbs up and citing it as a good example of how to run a successful campaign using social media. So, when I first read that IKEA had launch an iPhone app I was thinking it should be pretty cool. Sadly, I was mistaken, its basically the catalogue scanned in and published as an app – all 35mb of it. So, its got: